The president of Pinnacol Assurance, the multibillion-dollar workers’ compensation outfit, makes $448,813 yeara scandalous figure, according to several Colorado lawmakers active in last week’s unsuccessful raid on Pinnacol’s assets.

Meanwhile, the chancellor of the University of Colorado at Denver, M. Roy Wilson, receives a compensation package worth more than $700,000. When BusinessWeek published a ranking of the highest-paid university chiefs for 2007-08, Wilson cruised in at No. 6.

This is not to pick on Wilson — or on the healthy number of other officials at public universities in Colorado who are making the sort of six-figure salaries that so exercised lawmakers examining Pinnacol’s executive outlays. But the comparison does make you wonder: When was the last time you heard an elected politician complain about the rapid escalation of administrative salaries at universities?

As Jessica Corry of the Independence Institute reminded me the other day, total compensation for the UCD chancellor position has ballooned by more than $300,000 since the 2005-06 academic year. Meanwhile, Corry notes, salary sweeteners for the chancellors at the Boulder and Colorado Springs campuses haven’t been too shabby, either, with three-year hikes of more than $125,000 at Boulder (to $373,000) and $85,000 in Colorado Springs (to $297,000).

Look for that figure in Boulder to jump again soon, too, as the university replaces Chancellor Bud Peterson, recently hired as president of Georgia Tech. Such changeovers seem to produce the biggest salary leaps — in part, no doubt, because the compensation bar is rising around the country at a breathtaking rate, too.

For years, salary boosts for administrators have outpaced those for faculty at schools across the nation. One-third of presidents at public universities now pocket more than half a million dollars a year, and even the million-dollar threshold has been shattered (by former CU president Gordon Gee, for one, currently at Ohio State).

Lawmakers may believe that this state’s higher-ed salaries are entirely justified — and maybe most of them are. But at a time when most state employees are facing the prospect of payless furlough days and tens of thousands of Coloradans in the private sector are enduring actual salary cuts, you’d think lawmakers would at least be suggesting that higher-ed officials join in the wage belt-tightening. Apparently, though, it’s more satisfying to target executives of a government-chartered insurance company that is actually in terrific financial shape.

So will the University of Colorado freeze salaries, trim top pay packages and even furlough employees in imitation of the pattern elsewhere in the state? Ken McConnellogue, associate vice president for university relations, told me that the decision hadn’t been made. However, he added, every option remains open as CU waits for the state funding picture to clear.

OK, but shouldn’t higher-ed employees in this state share in the sacrifice no matter what? It’s not as if their peers elsewhere are escaping unscathed. The private college my daughter attends back East has frozen faculty pay (while still hiking tuition by 4.5 percent, a frustrated father notes). And public universities in Oregon, Arizona, California, New York, North Carolina, Idaho and elsewhere are freezing or cutting salaries — or at least have announced plans to do so.

Outside of the investment banking sector, after all, that’s what most organizations do when times are tough.